November 1905: Farewell to the inventor of the torpedo

Obituaries in archive editions of The Engineer always make interesting reading; with our benefit of hindsight we often have a different view than contemporaries of the deceased. An interesting case in point is the obituary of Robert Whitehead, a name now perhaps little known but significant because he was the inventor of the torpedo: this autonomous weapon was the forerunner of the UAVs that are now such a controversial feature of warfare.

“Paradoxical as it may seem, Mr Whitehead is reported to have considered [the torpedo] as a means for ensuring peace rather than bringing war,” the obituary said. “His idea, no doubt, was of the fearful effects of the torpedo, once realised, would be a sufficient deterrent to peoples and nations contemplating war.” History, of course, repeats itself and we can only imagine the conversation Whitehead might have had with proponents of deterrence theory in the 20th century and beyond.

Even in his lifetime, Whitehead was proved wrong; the obituary noted that he had been too ill in the last year of his life to have taken much notice of the conduct of the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. Both sides possessed torpedo technology, but this did nothing to prevent them from opening hostilities, and, over the course of the war, both sides launched a total of nearly 300 torpedoes and one of the Russian flagships – the battleship Knyaz Suvorov – was the first modern ship to be sunk by a torpedo. Both sides possessed large numbers of torpedo boats, many of which had been built in Britain.